Letter: Guns are the tools, madness the cause

The debate I have seen on Facebook and in the media about how to deal with the issue of school shootings is missing the real issue.

Most police shootings happen within five to 10 feet. Many rounds fired by untrained combatants strike the hands and guns of their opponent. Why? Because their brains superficially perceive the gun in the other person's hand as the threat. But it isn't. The real threat is the person holding the gun.

That is what many people in this Facebook discussion are doing. They are focusing on the gun, not the real cause. The real cause is the shooter's consciousness and the source of that consciousness.

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We live in this "every person for themselves" culture in the U.S. ... no universal health care, constant attacks by the right on Social Security and Medicare (disparaging those programs as "entitlement," inferring that we didn't earn them and don't deserve them), making the concept of socialism a dirty thing even though the root word is "social." When Hillary Clinton quoted the phrase that it takes a village to raise a child, she was the subject of derision. Isolation and desperation are the American ethos. It breeds madness.

These shootings don't happen in Switzerland despite the fact that most homes have military assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns. They also have socialized medicine and a sense of social safety that we lack. In many countries, there is a larger sense of community. And there is the difference.

I have seen almost no outrage and cries for changing our culture, our way of looking at each other -- arguments for seeing our society as a big family instead of so-called rugged individuals fighting for their own survival. I have seen little discussion about providing mental health care, or any health care, for all. No argument for ending our sense of social isolation and of the need to look out for each other. No, it is easier to focus on the apparent and superficial cause -- the tool the madman used.

But if he didn't have access to that tool, he would have used a different one. Madness will come out, and banning particular types of guns (although some should be banned and others regulated more) is not the ultimate solution.

And so I ask you all to not focus exclusively on the feel-good cheap thrill of bashing the National Rifle Association (deserving, though, they may be -- and I said "exclusively," leaving room for the occasional bash) and lulling yourselves into the false sense of security that taking away assault rifles will stop the madness. Let's look instead at our political and social structure which has allowed for the greatest disparity of wealth between the rich and poor since the Gilded Age, which supports the abandonment of the homeless, the mentally ill and the weak.

There can be no justice in a society that accepts poverty, malnourished children, abandoned elderly and economic oppression by corporations for the sake of avarice. Where there is no justice, there will be rage. Where there is rage, there will be illusion and madness.

It is time for a fundamental shift to recognizing that we are one community and that which impacts upon one impacts upon all. Let us truly be "social" in every good sense of the word.